At present, the removal of full bobbins from the spindles of a bank of spindles and their replacement by empty bobbins are still, in most cases, operations performed manually and requiring substantial work on the part of the operators who perform this work.
There also exist various semi-automatic and automatic apparatus permitting the performance of these operations. Generally speaking, these involve in the first instance the inclination of the spindle bearing carriage, then the extraction and removal of the full bobbins by means of mechanical devices provided with grippers or manipulating arms, assembling the full bobbins in a region spaced from the empty bobbins and, finally, replacing empty bobbins on the spindles.
Nevertheless, these known devices often have, on the one hand, insufficient precision as to their operation, arising from numerous misfunctions of the corresponding banks of spindles and involving, on the other hand, the non-use of that portion of the empty bobbins necessary for gripping the full bobbins, from which arises a loss of usable length of said empty bobbins.
The present invention has for its particular object to overcome the above drawbacks.